Terror Beneath the Sea (1966)

March 20, 2002

by Nathan Shumate

aka Kaitei Daisensou

Directed by Hajime Sato
Written by Masami Fukushima
Starring
- Shin-ichi (aka “Sonny”) Chiba
- Peggy Neal
- Erik Neilson
- Franz Gruber

I made a tactical error. I watched this movie, then waited a couple of days before sitting down to work on the review. Unfortunately, very little of it remained in my mind. It was so lifeless, so lacking in any hook to keep my interest, that already it had begun to fade away like a scarcely-remembered dream. (Part of that is, admittedly, my fault. I was so unimpressed by the on-screen happenings that for the last half hour I was playing around on the internet, giving only enough attention to the movie to be sure my Notable Totables were accurate.) So I’m having to rely more than normal on the notes I took.

One fact is still crystal-clear, though — this movie contains some of the goofiest fishman costumes ever displayed on celluloid.

Blondes just love strong Asian men with dubbed voices.

To begin at the beginning: A cadre of international journalists has been amassed aboard an American submarine to witness the unveiling of a new “bloodhound” homing torpedo. Among them is Ken (Shin-ichi Chiba, probably known better to you as “Sonny” Chiba) and Jenny (Peggy Neal, perhaps known to you only for appearing as Token American Girl in two other Japanese movies, one of which was The X From Outer Space). I never did figure out if they were working together for a single outfit, or if they had simply run into each other after having made each other’s acquaintance on previous assignments, but let’s just say that it really doesn’t matter, like most of the loose ends left hanging all over this movie.

For the purposes of the test, Commander Brown tells us, the sub will be firing upon a radio-controlled sub, demonstrating the torpedo’s prowess. But as the torpedo demolishes the target, the reporters see something flash across their viewscreen — something that looks surprisingly like the silhouette of a human. Was there actually a forgotten crewmember on the target sub?

The demonstration is understandably cut immediately short, but the next day Ken and Jenny decide to do a little bit of investigating. (A whole room of reporters, and only these two decide that there’s a story to be had here?) Their plan is simple: They just take a boat and go out to where the test happened, to have a look around. Now, not only is this where the military has been conducting secret testing of their torpedo technology, not only is this where a test had been conducted the previous day with some very mysterious results (which would probably lead to a few zillion navy frogmen scooping up and examining the pieces, right?), but the test was conducted beside an island which is the station from which nuclear waste is dumped (in barrels, thankfully) into the ocean. I’m thinking that security there’d probably be too tight for a couple of reporters to mosey in and take a dive for a look-see. But then, maybe that’s the kind of negative thinking that kept all the other reporters back and left this scoop for Ken and Jenny, because there’s no security at all, except for Commander Brown standing on the island with a pair of binoculars, in company with Professor Howard, who apparently runs the nuclear disposal thing. (Can’t for the life of me figure out why a nuclear waste disposal site would have three of those big-ass reactor towers, but there you go.)

Ken and Jenny dive, wander around a bit, run into some floating bits of wreckage, and then as they’re about to go up again, Jenny accidentally drops her camera. (Which probably made her feel stupid, since it very clearly had a neck strap which she just didn’t bother to make use of.) So Ken surfaces, and Jenny wanders around a bit before she finds her camera — and then turns to discover that she’s being watched by –

“A fishman stepped on my sheetcake!”

— a goofy-ass fishman! Now, folks, I’ve seen some bad fishman costumes in my day. In fact, most fishman costumes are unbelievably bad, and I don’t think that anyone’s really been able to improve on The Creature From the Black Lagoon, despite all the years that have elapsed. Now, the suits here are probably not the worst constructed ones I’ve ever seen (that honor would probably have to go to the titular creature in Rana, which was an over-the-head mask worn with a green-painted wetsuit), but it makes up for it in goofy design. Beady eyes, no chin, a certain baggy appearance, and a useless flaccid spinal fin that continually flops to the side… You really have to wonder who designed this thing in the first place, and then who approved it to be reproduced at least a half-dozen times.

Anyway. Jenny quickly snaps a flattering picture of the beastie, and then — klutz that she is — drops the camera again before hightailing it for the surface. (Methinks that photography courses would do well to teach the student to use that neck strap.)

Ken and Jenny immediately meet with Commander Brown, who denies everything (this despite having told Professor Howard that the navy was very suspicious, and Howard having presented him with a plaster cast of a flippered footprint found on the beach) and tries to insinuate that Jenny is, well, just a woman, and aren’t they a little bit imaginative? Ken, however, believes her, and so they make a second trip down the next day. (Again, no security.)

Oblivious to the fact that three of the fishmen are tailing them, they poke around and find an underwater cave with air, where they wander around Scooby Doo-like, with fishmen right behind them, until finally being confronted and overpowered. Yes, the mighty Sonny Chiba can be felled by some awkward-looking fishmen. We all have our Achilles heel.

Words fail me.

They awaken in a sterile laboratory, being gloated over by a sunglass-wearing megalomaniac who just exudes a “World Domination” vibe. His name is — Dr. Moore (Erik Neilson)!!! Really? “Dr. Moore”? That’s the best name they could come up with for a larger-than-life fascist dictator wanna-be? “Dr. Moore”? Haven’t these people ever seen a James Bond flick? Hell, even his female assistant who gets about three lines and looks like an evil schoolteacher on Little House on the Prairie is “Dr. Mueller” — which ain’t great, but it’s a damned sight better than “the evil Dr. Moore.”

Dr. Moore’s (giggle) plan is apparently to create a new world from his undersea base, which looks an awful lot like a city on the planet Krypton. He offers Ken a job there, seeing how he’s a “specialist in propaganda.” (Hm — I don’t know that that’s exactly how I’d describe the occupation of “journalist,” though one could certainly make a case.) Ken refuses him out of hand, even before hearing anything about a planned world cue or forced subjugation; apparently he has an instinctive mistrust of anyone who would wear sunglasses in such a dimly-lit complex.

In order to convince him, Moore takes them to the laboratory where the fishmen are made from human “volunteers” — first by transforming their skin, then inserting a new “aqualung,” and finally by expunging all traces of human will, leaving only a mechanical level of function which can be controlled by radio waves. To demonstrate, he brings two fishmen forward and then changes a control knob from “work” to “fight,” which the fishmen obligingly do while Moore chuckles in sadistic merriment. (There are obviously other options on the dial, but we don’t get to see them. I’d hope they might be a little more interesting than the two we see.)

Gee, despite Moore’s well-intentioned demonstration that Ken would really like working for him, Ken still refuses him. (Maybe Moore should have spent his time explaining the insurance and 401(k) package.) So Moore has them both sequestered until he can transform them too into mindless fishmen.

Where’s the son of Jor-El when you need him?

(Meanwhile, by the way, Commander Brown has had his men searching for the missing reporters, but though they managed to find Jenny’s camera and develop the picture of the fishman, they’ve yet to sumble across an undersea sovereignty in the making.)

Moore then sets his fishmen to bring in Dr. Howard from the island, which results in the following revelations: 1) Nuclear facilities have such lax security, they don’t even bother to lock their doors at night; and 2) fishmen flippers make exactly the same sound on tile floors as hard-bottomed dress shoes.

Of course, things really aren’t that much more secure in Mooretopia. Ken has previously noticed that the denizens of the undersea complex use little badges to automatically open doors — so when Dr. Mueller comes alone to retrieve them, Ken simply knocks her out and grabs her badge, leading to an attempted escape which comes to naught. (Okay, security may be a little bit tighter.) While Ken and Jenny are strapped down for their process to begin, Howard reacts in horror that the scientist making all this happen for Moore is one Dr. Heim, who’s apparently turned against the inherent nobility of science and all that stuff. I mention this only because Heim launches into an impassioned but incomprehensible speech about how Moore’s plan is “a world that makes sense!” He does not elaborate on to how, exactly, any of this makes sense — I suppose it’s something any any reasonable person should comprehend without any help, right?

So Ken and Jenny begin the procedure, which at the first stage essentially coats their hands and necks with flaking latex. (Jenny is really upset about this, and who can blame her? You’ll notice that, camera-dropping aside, she hasn’t contributed bugger all to the story; she’s nothing more than a pretty blonde face, and once that’s gone, what role could she possibly play?)

All your base… base… base…

Fortunately, this is just about the time that the submarine looking for them finds the undersea city and fires on it with that much-vaunted torpedo (big freaking deal, it’s a stationary target). Apparently, a world that makes sense is a world without circuit breakers, because it’s only that one explosion that starts chain reactions. (I think all of these would-be world conquerors need to stop using the same contractor for their secret bases.) Among the unsavory side-effects here is that all of the fishmen are released from radio control, and although they may not be Rhodes scholars, they do know enough to pick up guns and start firing on people.

For about half an hour.

Seriously. The next half an hour — everything up to the end credits, basically — is nothing but fishmen shooting people. Mostly scientists. They hit the scientists. They miss our good-guy trio repeatedly (Howard having joined Ken and Jenny) as they dodge in and out and have a protracted showdown with Moore and eventually kill him and escape in his escape pod. (Really, can you blame me for surfing the web through this part?) And since it turns out that Dr. Howard knows how to reverse Heim’s process, Jenny is restored to her pretty blonde self and all is right with the world.

Blech.

The story makes no sense, the characters don’t interact worth a damn, the written-in-English script is inane, there’s nothing in the way of dramatic tension, the entire plot hinges on every character being as stupid as humanly possible, and the fishman suits suck. I think I paid attention far too well, thank you.